A Rose in Every Other Sense
by The Last Leaf
Summary: The moment she was born she was labeled a murdered in her father's eyes. He refused to look at her or even acknowledge her existence. But she loved him best when he was drunk, because that was when he was the gentlest.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I do not own VK. If I do, however, there would be about 60% less angst and 70% more plot.

Warning: There will be disturbing themes, especially incest, in the way that you probably don't expect.

* * *

A Rose in Every Other Sense

* * *

"Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall."

- William Shakespeare

* * *

She imagined her birth wasn't very pleasant. The burning and squeezing of the birth canal pushed her miserable self out. It was burning, seething, and unbearable. She screamed and her mother screamed. Then her mother stopped screaming and there was an eerie silence.

In that moment, in her father's eyes, she was branded as a murderer.

He rejected the tiny baby being handed to him. It disgusted him and filled him with brimming hatred. He wanted to wrap his fingers around its fragile neck and snap it in half. He felt nothing looking the child she died bringing into the world. Nothing. No fatherly passion or a flicker of love. It was just there. A reason why his lovely wife no longer existed.

He refused to look at her or even acknowledge her existence. He didn't even give her a name even when her brother and nana begged him. He was soaked deep in his grief that he was barely aware of his surroundings.

It was her brother who named her after a few weeks. He said the roses in the garden all bloomed overnight the moment she was born and scent of roses overwhelmed the manor, so her name was Rose for the beautiful roses.

Their father gave a silent approval before retreating back into his dark room to gloom over the death of his wife. He wanted to kill the girl child, but when he laid his eyes upon it, it was smaller and paler than he remembered and it disturbed him. It would be easy, but he didn't kill it and allowed it to live.

He understood, rationally, intellectually that it wasn't the child's fault. However, it soothed him to be able to loath something with such intensity to replace the love and warmth he had lost. He could not bring himself to love or even look at the child, because every time it just reminded him of her death, and it overwhelmed him with the desire to kill.

Rose didn't understand when she was growing up why father was never home or never look at her. She was warned to stay away from the handsome vampire she called her father by her brother and nana, and they always clutched her wrist fearfully when he returned, flinching when his gaze swept past her. They were afraid of her father, but she wasn't, at first. Once, when nana wasn't looking, snuck into her father's office on one of those rare days he returned home.

She embraced her stiff father with a bright smile and yelled, "Welcome home!".

He glanced at her coolly; a cold shiver ran down her back and she discovered that it was hard to breath. A cackle of power swept her off her feet and she fell back.

"I don't like being touched," he hissed and the whips of his word burned into her heart and tore a bleeding hole. She flinched.

Before he could never glare anymore at her, she ran away with overflowing tears. She sobbed on her nana's lap for hours. But nana just brushed her hair and explained that her father just misses her mother. He didn't mean to hurt her. But even nana didn't sound truly convinced by her own words.

She asked what her mother was like. Was she beautiful, gentle, or sweet?

Nana thought about it momentarily and smiled softly. "Your mother was the kindest and most beautiful queen I have ever seen. When she walked into a room, she would lid it up like the sun."

And she asked her brother, who was surprised at her question. "She sang often and she was loved by everyone… I remember she would caress her stomach and smile. She smiled a lot and she was always happy and Father was happy." He realized he said something wrong and backtracked.

"Does father hate me? Why does he hate me?" she cried into his arms.

"He doesn't hate you," her brother comforted her, combing her soft brown hair with his fingers, "He will come to love you. He just loved mom too much to forget her."

Her brother hoped that his father will come to the senses one day.

Father was never home for long period of time. He would go away for months at times for meetings or political reasons, and locked himself in his study when he was back, Maybe he could not stand living in the manor where his wife passed away; it reminded him too much of the happiness he once grasped in his hand, or maybe he could not bear to see the child that was the source of much of his misery.

When she turned seven, her brother went away to boarding school, and he could only visited her couple of times. He wrote to her letters, but it wasn't the same.

The manor stilled with silence after her brother's departure. With only nana and a few servants to keep her company, Rose grew up.

She had governesses and servants and pretty dresses and glossy gifts that her brother sent her from boarding school.

The world around her was quiet, resting precariously on broken egg shells.

Her father's friend, a blond friendly man, often came by the manor and showered with affections and gifts. Sometimes she wished that he was her father instead of the dark brooding man. He cheered her up with light hearted jokes and dotted on her like a father she never had.

She studied her texts and impressed her governesses with her knowledge. She groomed herself and perfected her manners, the twirl of a hand and the sweeping of a skirt, hoping that maybe if she shone brighter and brighter, her father would part with some sought-after love.

But he never glanced her ways, even if she stood before him with a prestigious trophy, he pushed her away like she was never there and went on his way.

Nana cursed under her breathes at the displaced anger and hatred when she tended the purple bruises flowered on her milky limps. But Rose loved her father with all her simple heart. She simply wanted her father to talk to her, even a careless comment would lift her spirits for days.

But her father only glared at her with pressed lips and left the manor once more without any promises to return. He didn't speak to her, even one word, "move," was not wasted on her.

He hated her. She could read it in his eyes, but she refused to believe it. She wanted to earn his love, to earn what was rightfully hers. She wanted to please with like an attention-starved child.

Rose began to hate her own mother, for what she did to her father. She could not imagine a love to lingering and powerful that rendered a man like her father crippled and vile for the rest of his immortal life.

She thinned as she grew tall. At thirteen, her breasts started filling out and she developed a waists. She examined herself curiously in the mirror in the morning, and decided that she looked quite charming.

Her father's friend stumbled and gaped like an uncouth idiot when he saw her one spring morning and swore that she looked just like her mother at youth. She touched her cheeks and gazed into a mirror and wondered. There were no pictures of her mother around the house. Supposedly her father burned it all when her mother passed away. It bought him too much pain. But from her blond uncle's description it seemed as though the late queen was reincarnated with her daughter, especially when Rose allowed her hair to fall down her waist.

Her father's friend took her out of the manor, complaining that she didn't go out enough. She didn't have any friends, and her world was limited to nana and her brother. Rose was a protected child of her nana and brother, whose wish was overruled by the golden man who pulled her out of her gates despite the protests. She went to parties in French ribbons and exquisite skirts. Rose didn't really understand the society she begun to soak herself into, except it was beautiful and glamorous and everyone loved her.

Rose met vampires who claimed to be her father's best friends and ate her hungrily with their hostile eyes. They shook her hands with her cold, icy fingers, extending their claws over her soft skin like spider legs. They whispered compliments to her looks and she was compared often to her late mother with mocked praises. Her body shivered with discomfort as she attempted to exit the ballroom with the excuse of looking for a bathroom, waving off invites.

Rose found herself lost in the underground maze as she turned the same corner twice and ended up at a dead end multiple times. She grumbled with frustration as the gentleman who bought her here had disappeared a few minutes in.

She walked down another hallway that looked suspiciously like the one she encountered ten minutes ago.

Her sharp hearing caught winds of odd sounds in the air. She followed the guttural noises. Was someone getting assaulted, she wondered.

She turned another corner, following the source of the sound, before the sight sent her reeling backward.

She recognized the fornicating couple. The man, whose back she recognized, was her missing father's friend, and the woman, whose exposed left breast popped from the pulled collar… she racked her brain, then remembered. She was introduced as the wife of her father's close friend, a rich man by the name of Aidoh.

She had walked into a scene of an adultery affair.

The lustful moans and the shuffling of the clothes alarmed her. Blushing, Rose took a step back and ran away. She didn't know how she found the ballroom again, but she discovered that now she could hardly look at the blond man in the eyes without remembering the moans and the musky smell in the air.

Her face would flush red at the thought, and she would ramble listlessly to herself. Her heart squeezed tenderly and she didn't like it.

She distanced herself from that blond man and ignored the hurt in his eyes.

She confined in nana of what she had seen that night, which she didn't exactly understand. Nana looked at her sympathetically and patted her head, muttering, "You are still a child."

She never noticed how old nana had gotten over the years. She seemed to have shrunken in size, from towering over Rose to being just a head taller. Her winkles multiplied with years, but she still kept her silver hair in a tight bun. The old woman was now just fragile and small. Nana was like her surrogate mother. She had loved Rose like her own and always tried to protect Rose from the harsher world.

She recalled a moment in youth when she walked into a chamber to find two servants wrestling naked on the couch, panting heavily. She didn't understand it then, because nana pulled her fingers before her eyes and everything fell into darkness.

She had read books and pamphlets about romances, sex, and love, but it felt blank to her. Those passions, those needs, those urges were mysterious that she could not grasp. Nana explained that she was too young to know, but she was curious about the dark scene she captured. The curled up legs around the man's waist, the tight grip on the buttocks, and the rocking and thrusting of the hips, those details imprinted on her mind and would not leave.

Rose was metamorphosing into a woman, little by little, and bit by bit. Shredding her baby feathers, she rose from the ashes, new and naked. She woke up one autumn morning to find blood on her underwear. At first she was frightened and woke her nana up in a panic, persuaded she was dying. Nana touched her face sweetly and announced that Rose was finally a woman.

"This is the proof that you are all grown up," nana enlightened softly to a confused young girl. She didn't understand her change, but everyone else seemed to.

Father came and left, often at odd times. Often than not, he came back, swaying on his feet, carried by his friends. He still ignored her, regarding her as a servant around the house, speaking only when he must. Sometimes she wondered if he was the powerful and chilling pureblood she had heard so much about, who united the divided vampire society. It didn't seem like to be the pathetic man before her who reeked of alcohol and cheap perfume, whose wife's death broke him so entirely.

She loved her father best when he was drunk.

When her father was drunk, she caught him gazing at her as if he wanted to devour her, as if she were someone else who was not there. Then his eyes flickered away and his heart closed again. Once he touched her cheek with a gentleness she never knew as she winced with fear that he was going to strike her. But he only removed his hand a moment later and ordered her to leave. But it lingered in Rose's heart; when he was drunk, it was the only time he ever shown any affection for her.

The chilly winds breezed around the empty hallways of the cursed manor in the valley.

Her brother dropped his luggage on his foot when he laid his eyes on her.

He hugged her tightly, more tightly than she had ever remembered him to. He had been gone for a year even if his letters came a few times every month.

He pulled back and she thought that she detected something wavering in his dark eyes that weren't there before. He reminded her of father; their resemblance was uncanny.

But she smiled brightly at him and he felt himself melted away in her thinned eyes.

The day she turned fourteen, she found her father waiting for her in the living room after she woke up from her sleep. Still in her night flock, her father instructed her to sit down.

Rose did as she was told and tethered with anticipation that maybe, this, this will be the day her father will finally recognize her as his daughter.

Father was unsmiling as he handed her a package on the table, saying how it used to be her mother's and that she would have wanted Rose to have it.

Rose was in awe. It was the first time father had spoken so many consecutive words to her and not glared at her as if she were something nasty and unworthy to him.

Then he continued speaking seriously, sometimes watching her, but more often than not, his eyes were carelessly away and blank as if he were somewhere else already.

"You are going into deep sleep?" she gapped at him, standing up.

The sudden movement drew his attention for a second, but then it diverted again. He nodded and said that his duty to his wife was done. He will leave the crown to her brother, and the inheritance will be divided equally between his two children. He had no more business in this world.

But Rose didn't care. The first time he had spoken to her so directly and not harsh, those were words of parting. He will never see her, never love her as she so had wanted, wished for. She will never achieve it.

He will not allow it. He was going to leave, without her, and without letting her stop him. He had already made his decision firm and final.

Then she was alone with the package on the table. With a shaking hand, she opened the brown paper bag.

Drops of tears fell on the paper and soaked into a deeper brown.

There were few items in the package that appeared to be quite old and worn, but well taken care off.

A few silver jewelries, like bracelet and necklace… a silvery defensive stick of a kind… few yellowed letters from a late Mr. Cross… a rose frozen in amber with a glass case… finally a several old pictures all with a young smiling girl in them… Rose recognized her mother immediately as she traced her finger over the flat surface. They did look almost identical, except such careless happiness will not become an expression on her face.

She was gazing at her own mother, seeing her mother for the first time in her life. Tear overflowed her eyes and dripped down her face. She stared at the pictures and she touched her face. She remembered the times she looked into the mirror and felt as if she was watching someone else. How father only looked at her as if she were someone else.

The tore brown paper wrinkled in her hands as she looked up with determination and tears stopped flowing.

When father came home that night, stinking drunken as he always was on the anniversary of mother's death, she stared at him with trembling shoulders.

Father lied on his bed, feeling once again incapable and pathetic. He didn't like those beautiful, cheap women, but they praised him and pleased him and made him feel the way he used to feel, powerful and immortal. He closed his eyes as dizziness and numbness washed over his sensations. He enjoyed what alcohol did for him, numbing the excruciating hole where his queen used to be. When he drank, it pained less and he forgot. He forgot that she died years ago and that he will never see her again. He could fool himself into thinking that she still existed and the figure rested behind him was her.

Rose didn't really know what she was doing. She opened the door with her hair down, fluttering about her waist. She combed her hair the way mother did in her pictures. She sat down on the bed and caressed her father's hair with her fingers.

He opened his eyes and stared at her with misted eyes. He was not quite awake or sober.

"I look like her, don't I?" she whispered quietly to him.

He stared at her with surprise, and murmured a name under his breath. He reached up and touched her with so much love and gentleness in his eyes that she wanted to cry, because it was the first time she had felt so much love from her father.

She pulled away a little bit and started undoing her night gown. She dropped the clothes on the floor and slipped into his bed.

Rose recalled contents of the letter, gazing at her confused father with an uncharacteristic bright smile. "Kaname-senpai…" she sighed. "Kaname…Kaname…"

Then he pulled her down and pushed her against the mattress.

Her father knew it couldn't have been his wife. She was dead. She had been dead for a long, long time, fallen into ashes, crumpled into dusts. So completely gone that he didn't know where to start putting her back together again.

Rationally, he knew she couldn't have been Yuki, but he didn't care. He didn't care. He didn't want to remember her death, her horrid death. But tonight, his Yuki was alive, well, and breathing as she had not done so in years. She was before him. She was touching him, saying his name. She was under him, breathing heavily, so clumsy that he wanted to laugh.

It wasn't a very pleasant experience. He was too big and she was too small. It felt heavy and hot and uncomfortable. She bled and he hurt her.

She cried and dug her nails into his back.

When it was over, she rolled over her side, panting lightly, thinking how it would hurt to sit tomorrow.

When the sensation ebbed back to him, her father realized what he had done and felt sick to his stomach. He tried to say anything comforting, but he couldn't think of anything to say.

Rose smiled, even though she felt nauseated and sticky, but she knew she had made him acknowledge her in a way that no other woman could.

As long as she has this face, he will come to her.

He will see her.

* * *

This is basically my take on Kaname-Yuki-children fic.

There is 2 more parts.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I do not own VK. If I do, however, there would be about 60% less angst and 70% more plot.

Warning: There will be disturbing themes, especially incest, in the way that you probably don't expect, and I want to say that there is a HEAVY RAPE in the chapter. If this disturbs you, don't read this.

* * *

A Rose in Every Other Sense

* * *

"Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall."

- William Shakespeare

* * *

The way nana looked at her changed when she caught Rose leaving her father's room before dawn. It was filled with pity, disgust, and abhorrence.

There was a fight. Nana screamed and cried and begged Rose to leave her father. She said she should have taken Rose and left the manor, and it was all her fault.

Nana stopped speaking to her.

Then, one day, nana left the manor in revulsion and never came back. Rose was even more alone than before. She could hear a dust drifting in the air and the creaks in the wood across the manor. The servants slipped in and out quietly and gossiped amongst themselves. She didn't care. They were paid to serve and not to think.

She went out by herself at night and laid in the cool grasses, looking at the stars. The dews caught in her sleeves and hairs. She smelled the moist earth and the quiet night. The nightingale sang in the distance, and she could hear herself think. She wondered if she will outlive the stars, because the road of immortality was so dark and lonely. The lights of moon touched her limbs coldly, and she closed her eyes, imagining death.

She went living her life as she did before.

Rose wore her hair up and went to parties. She studied her texts and drank tea with Aidoh's wife, an ordinary lonely woman. She wondered how this timid woman had the courage to have an affair with that blond man. They talked about her daughter, a princess of seven years of age. Rose played with the little girl who grew fond of her. She pondered whether she will ever have a daughter.

She went home and ate dinner by herself in a large dining room. She thought briefly about her brother, whom she missed dearly. The only the clatter of knife and fork echoed in the chamber. She sighed and missed her brother some more.

Then her father came home, drunk, and waited for her in his bedroom. She looked into his eyes and saw another girl in the reflection.

She took off her clothes and climbed into his bed.

And his queen walked once more on earth every night she was with him.

Finally it was summer again and the car glided to a stop before the locked gates of Kuran manor. Her brother stepped out of the car and the gates parted. The servant rushed out to help him, but his attention snatched away by the girl that fell into his arms.

She said his name and whispered how she missed him. He was enthralled. She was different from his memories of her, a stubborn little girl. A sensuality clung to her limps. She smelled odd like the musky sea, as if her scent had been mixed up with something else, but he dismissed it.

The air was sweet with blossoms and they spend the whole day in the surrounding woods together, playing like little children. Her hands and feet were caked with mud and her dress was ruined. But she didn't care.

He pushed her down a flowery field and she slipped into the ground's embrace, laughing. He landed beside her and tickled her breathless.

Then he stopped and looked into her eyes, as if trying to confess something weighing on his heart.

She caught her breath and stared back.

Rose pulled away suddenly and smiled. "It is time for dinner."

They ate quietly, but as the servants cleared the table, her brother reached over and clasped his hand over hers, gazing at her carefully. His thumb caressed the back of her hand.

Rose looked at him and didn't pull her hand away.

Later, they went out into the night and laid in the fields, watching the stars. He still held her hand.

She wanted to cry because she knew this wasn't forever, and forever was too long. The uncertainties of their young age and distance doomed their romance.

Nana once told her that if a story went on long enough, it will become a tragedy. She suspected the truth in nana's words.

She sensed him before her brother did and she withdrew her hand.

He let go easily.

She was almost disappointed.

Then she was gone, meeting her father's dark unreadable eyes in the shadows.

She whimpered his name and he devoured the sound with lust. She didn't get the chance of slipping out of her dew-clad clothes before her father took her roughly against the door of his chamber, mumbling name of her mother.

She was once again loved, twice-loved by her father, once as mother, twice as daughter.

Rose loved him best when he was drunk, for that was when he was the gentlest.

His whispers of her mother's name echoed in her ears and she wondered what kind of love did they have that, after its demise, crippled her father so? It must have been a very cruel and selfish love to have eaten away his soul and left only an empty shell of a once powerful vampire.

She snuck back into her bedroom in the middle of the night to find her brother sleeping in an armchair near her door.

She was reminded of that love she was so foreign to, but so destructive in its path.

Rose wanted to touch him, but she held her hand, and went into her bedroom. She cleaned herself and drifted into an uneasy sleep.

She was never woken up with kisses before. Father never cared for such frivolous acts, nor were they lovers. But the first time she was woken up with kisses from her brother, she felt her heart shook.

Rose knew what he was doing and what he was trying to do. He was courting her, soften her with girlish fairy tales and worldly romances. She guessed it was only fair, after all Kuran have a long standing tradition of marrying their relatives. At least her brother was making an effort to make her love him, instead of the forced marriage.

Her body still ached from the roughness her father held her with last night, but she recovered fairly well.

Her brother exchanged chaste kisses with her, but he wanted more. She recognized the same look in her father's eyes. They held hands often, but she didn't allow his fingers to wonder any further.

Once, he pushed those boundaries and she accidently uttered a guttural, "…Kaname…" before swallowing the word back into her throat. Rose wasn't sure if he had heard her or not, but her brother did eyed her with suspicion afterward.

They did look very alike. She could see shadows of her father clearly echoing in her brother, down to the very fabric of their souls. Sometimes the way Rose caught her brother staring at her with Father's hungry eyes and it frightened and excited her at the same time. Sometimes when he kissed her with gentleness, she confused it with Father's drunken kisses.

Father did know of the flirtatious nature their relationship had taken and seemed none too pleased. He was rougher with her, less patient, and on some days, Rose discovered that it was difficult to walk normally. Rose protested, but he didn't listen to her.

After a few weeks, they became less careful. In retrospect, Rose should have guessed that her brother would find out.

Her father had been too careless. Or maybe he wanted her brother to discover her, loose and used, panting with parted legs.

Her father had barely left the bedroom and Rose, exhausted and bruised, passed out momentarily. Only to wake up to her brother's disbelief, she sighed and tried to preserve some modesty by pulling down her nightgown, not that she had much left.

It took some courage, but she finally met his wide and angry eyes.

He opened his mouth and struggled to speak. His shouldered were trembling. He managed on the third try.

"How… long?" he hissed brokenly, but attempted again, more coherently, summoning more pressing rage, "How long have this been going on?"

She wanted to get on her bare feet, sprawling weakly on the bed was no position of power that she wished to be in currently.

But her brother pressed her down with iron hands when she tried. She winced at the wrath of pain around her poor wrists.

"Answer me," he commanded. Flame licked his eyes and they seemed to spark in the darkness.

She gazed back carelessly as if the situation didn't concern her at all and shrugged.

"A couple of months?" she offered.

How fascinating the beautiful man child before her looked? The bright red irises burned into her and the thinly pressed mouth stifling his anger, he did inherit their father's famed beauty. Funny, how her mind concentrated on the most frivolous things. Laughs bubbled up the pit of her stomach, but she suppressed it. It probably won't help the situation if she allowed smile to crawl up her lips.

He freed her again, mumbling furiously under his breathes, "I am going to kill that bastard. He must have forced you into this… this… disgusting grotesque… it makes me sick. I should have protected you…"

"Protected me?" Rose repeated blankly, and then she couldn't help the smirk that appeared on her lips.

Her words diverted his attention back to her in confusion.

She sat up on the bed, smoothing the wrinkles on her white gown, smiling widely, like a siren or Venus. "You think he was the one who initiated this?"

He stared at her, now more calm and serious. His dark eyes flashed dangerously. "What do you mean, sister?"

She laughed, clear as bells. He loved that laughter, because it meant something truly pleased her. "You think that father came to my bed and raped me? That man? Darling, he would not. No, it is I who came to him. It is I walked willingly into his bedroom, numerous of times. I tempted him with my unclothed body and lead him astray."

"Why?" his voice was quiet, but rumbling.

"Have you not seen my face? Do you know with whom do I closely resemble to? Every night our father is with me, he holds his dear queen in his arms again. He loved her and he will continue to love her. And I?" her voice turned wistful, "I get his love. He will love me and he will acknowledge me as he had not done so since my birth. He will finally see me, not as only the murderer of his wife, but something more precious and valuable than that. I am finally loved by him."

He backhanded her furiously across her face. She was flung on her back against the bed with a poof. She looked up at the dark ceiling with its fancy wood carving emptily. She could see every brush of details in the elegant panels, to the curl of leaves and down to the fiber of the material.

Her brother pounced on her. The bed shook lightly.

The weight on her wrists came back.

She felt her night gown pushed up and felt no reason to stop it. She could not stop him.

His nails pierced into her skin and drew blood.

She stared at the ceiling as if it held her in some fascination as his breath was hot against her skin and his aggressive fingers manhandled her like a broken mannequin.

He muttered angry and passionate words that she didn't pay attention to.

The exquisite relief of the flower really was quite beautiful. She never noticed its beauty before.

He gripped her hips so brutally that she wondered if he punctured her skin with his nails.

He hurt her. His vicious hands tore her skin and printed bruises on her milky limbs. He always has been their father's son. He wore a sadistic grin on his face and brightened when she flinched at the pain he caused. When she caught a glimpse of it, true fear coursed through her veins and she panicked and she wanted to cry.

Then, without warning, he penetrated her violently, not gentle at all.

She gasped at the abrupt, sharp pain. She was still moist from her father, but it felt like he stabbed her and continued to stab her over and over again.

She felt as though she was breaking into pieces from inside.

She buckled under him and all the air in her lungs have been sucked out of her.

Her fingers twisted and tangled in the sheets.

The pain intensified as he rode her hard, without mercy, pounding into her flesh like a heavy hammer against a nail.

It was searing, detestation, and unpleasant.

Rose wanted him out. Her fingers pushed frantically against his hard muscles and she screamed for him to get off.

The bed shook. She kept screaming and begging.

And the bed kept on shaking until it ended.

She stopped screaming.

Afterward, when Rose finally found the strength to move again, she stumbled into the field outside and collapsed on the grasses. She curled into a ball, gasping and shaking.

Its dewy tendrils curled around her ankles and throat. She smelled the flowers of the early dawn, swaying lightly in the rosy morning light. She looked up vacantly at the clouds drifting lazily across the sky.

The morning breeze cooled her hot body and she shivered unconsciously. Her body hurt and she was sore all over. She had stop bleeding, but dried blood coagulated down her legs.

Rose breathed and wanted to cry, except there were no tears in her eyes. She was so confused and it hurt and it hurt and it hurt and she could not breathe well. The air choked her throat and she tried to breath.

She wished nana was here to explain everything to her. Where was nana? She missed her so much. Why was everything so messed up?

She remembered their chaste kisses on the field, where he pressed his lips lovingly against hers. He did not kiss her at all last night. He had tried and she turned her head away in disgust and he did not try again. A kiss would have been inappropriate.

And he would not kiss her so chastely ever again. Not after that.

She held her hand high above her and let it fall.

She closed her eyes and fell asleep in the field.

When Rose came to again, she was cleaned and returned to her bed. Her body healed the sexual marks, and if the sensation of their hands on her body hadn't been so strong, she would have thought of it to be a dream. She didn't know who returned her to her bed, but she didn't care to know.

The less she cared, the less those things will pain her. So she did not care.

Her father's friend came to visit her, worried over her recent disappearance in high society. She received him for tea and watched his golden hair sparkled in the afternoon sun light. He never liked the night, preferred the day.

The maid bought in the tea and the cakes, while he greeted her. She didn't listen to it, still in some silky slip and a silk robe she wore for sleep. She raised one leg languidly and sat distinctly un-ladylike.

Sunlight filtered through the linen clothes, fluttering in the wind. The air was alive with the taste of summer. Hot air blew in and out.

She looked outside as he spoke and interrupted him suddenly. "I want to go swimming."

"Excuse me?" the blond vampire stuttered.

"I want to go swimming," Rose stood up and started walking outside. She glided down the stairs barefooted, and stumbled through the flower fields. The sun burned her skin. The man could hardly catch up to her. Bees and butterflies dotted the green scenery, and the plant life twisted underneath her feet.

There was an old bathing pool of sorts that nana told her mother loved to simmer in on hot summer days. It glittered in the light with its cool, blue water like a sapphire, surrounding by creamy marble. In summer, Rose used to dip her foot into the cool water and imagine that mother was still alive and her family was perfect and her father was the vampire beside her.

When she reached the white bank, Rose shrugged off the silk robe and the slip fell into a silvery pool at her feet. The man behind her looked away, embarrassed at the state of her undressed.

Rose didn't care. She dove in, head first with a brilliant splash. She remained under the water for a few seconds before breaking the disturbed surface.

She looked up at the sky and breathed. Then she swam back toward him in broad strokes, resting her head on the marble bank.

"You were saying?" she inquired. Wet hair stuck to her face and splattered water on the ground.

"Is everything alright?" his green eyes squinted with fatherly concern. "I haven't seen you and you are acting very odd, Rose."

She closed her mouth and looked at him, thinking.

"Are you in love with Mrs. Aidoh?"

Meeting his surprised face, Rose rolled her eyes and said, "You don't have to deny it. I saw you two. If you are worried whether Mr. Aidoh will find out, rest assured, it will not be from my lips."

"I…" the blond man bit his lips and appeared very distressed. "I…"

"Well?" she prompted as the marble evaporated the water and heated up the stone.

"I am very fond of her," he sighed and didn't meet her eyes. "Very fond."

She remembered the night, her pushed up skirt, his lingering fingers, and the sounds, oh god, the sounds that haunted her dreams.

"I wish," she said abruptly and softly, "that someone would be fond of me as you do for Mrs. Aidoh."

"And one day, someone would," he smiled gently and patted her head, "Trust me."

Rose pulled away, swimming in backstroke, facing the bright blue sky.

She exhaled and whispered with a disturbing smile, "I don't think that…"

He didn't hear the rest of her sentence. She ducked under the water and only fleeting illusions under the current hinted where she disappeared.

"Takuma!" she burst out of the surface of splashed water with her free hand, careless like a young girl. "I love you!"

"I love you too," he tried shielding himself from the water, laughing as he splashed back. She sneaked up and pulled him into a pool with a high-pitched giggle. In turn, he dragged her beneath the water just as she resurfaced to breath. In the end, they were both wet and breathless from playing in the pool.

She sneezed as she put her clothes back on and leaned against him, watching the orange sunset, spilling over colorful clouds like mixed oil paints. Drops of water caught in her eyelashes.

"Sometimes," she confessed quietly, "I wish you are my father. Then maybe…"

He shuffled her wet hair like a playful big brother. "What are you talking about Rose? Kaname would be hurt to hear that."

"You and I both know that's not true. He would be happier if mother was alive instead of me. Everyone would be," she tried to say it nonchalantly, but failed. She couldn't help the tears that fell and tried to hide it. "No one wants me alive. They all," she sobbed softly, "they all rather that I died instead of mother."

"That's not true," he assured her sincerely, holding her hand very carefully in his, and staring earnestly into her eyes. "I, for one, would be devastated." He touched her face sweetly and wiped off her tears with his hand.

She looked as if she were about to cry of happiness, but instead smiled through her tears, and said, "Thank you."

Takuma smiled back and embraced the little girl, because he knew no matter how mature she acted, she was still a young child who craved for small gestures of affection. Maybe he should talk to Kaname about her. No matter how much Kaname loved the queen, it was not this child's fault for her death. Surely, Kaname could understand that and come to love his own daughter before it permanently damages this cute girl.

The sun went completely down over the trees of the isolated valley.

Such a sweet young girl shouldn't be locked up in a stuffy old manor all her life. She needed to get out and see the world.

He thought about inviting her to the soiree tonight, but just as he was about to ask, Rose stood up.

"I must go. Good bye Takuma," she waved at someone inside as she dried her tears, and left without letting say another word.

He could really see the blurred figure inside the manor very well. It was too dark and far away. She melted into one with the blurred man and the door closed, shutting out all the light.

It was all black now, not even the moon was out.

And it was the last image Ichijou had of her, a young girl who became so small that she disappeared into the darkness.

* * *

There is one last part to this story.

I hope you enjoyed reading this as I enjoyed writing it.


End file.
